As well as a range of tools to understand the Sun’s effect on Earth infrastructure, ESA’s Space Weather Service Network currently alerts teams flying missions throughout the Solar System of extreme space weather, with forecasts for Mercury, Venus and Mars freely available via the Network’s Portal, and Jupiter on the way.

“Gathering data on events like this is crucial to understanding how they arise, improving our space weather models, forecasts and early-warning systems,” explains Alexi Glover, ESA Space Weather Service Coordinator.

“Solar Orbiter is providing us with an excellent opportunity to compare our forecasts with real observations and test how well our models and tools perform for these regions”.